Hello, and welcome back to the Part-Time Creator Academy. In this video, we're going to cover a couple different things like the basics of community building, how to build meaningful connections, as well as we're going to give you three engagement hacks that you can use in your videos to get more engagement. So let's get started.
Over the last couple of videos, we taught you guys the things that you need to know when it comes to generating views. Stuff like the importance of watch time, how to develop a good idea, what makes a good idea, and essentially the core things that you need to know to get views on your videos.
The next thing that we're going to touch on is creating engagement with your videos. Engagement like likes and comments is important because if your video has good engagement, it helps the video perform better. But something to keep in mind is that engagement alone will not make your video go viral. It will only help. The video idea and watch time are still the most important parts, but creating a video idea with engagement in mind can help a video that would otherwise do okay do even better.
The best way to build engagement is to build meaningful relationships with your followers. This is by doing things like:
- Responding to comments,
- Messaging people back, and
- Answering any questions that people might have.
A lot of people will post content and then never engage with that post ever again. By doing this, you're missing out on so much opportunity for engagement. When you start out being a creator, it is a great idea to be as active as possible in the comment section of your posts and engage with whoever is leaving comments. This will build a relationship with your followers and they will see that you are someone who actually cares about their followers and actually try to put effort into building a relationship with them.
A good rule of thumb is to spend at least 10 to 15 minutes a day responding to comments on your posts and engaging with your followers. This is a short amount of time, but over the long run, it will do a ton for increasing follower loyalty and trust.
Another great way to engage is to comment and engage with other people who are in the same niche as you. If you're active and consistently engaging with other people's posts, people will see your comments and go to your page and watch your videos. This is a great way to build connections with other creators in your niche and also potentially collaborate in the future.
Now, aside from being active and engaged on your posts, there are also some tips and tricks that you can use in your videos themselves to create engagement. The next thing that we're going to talk about are the three most effective things that you can do in your videos to get people to actually engage with them.
So, I know what you're probably thinking. Controversy, I don't want to be controversial at all. I want to be the least controversial person I can. I want to please everyone who watches my videos and I just don't want them to not like me. And that's a bit of a problem. When you're too agreeable, no one really has anything to talk about when they watch your video. But if you have a controversial opinion, people will either be totally with you or they'll be totally against you. And essentially, they're forced to choose a side. Now, this might seem like a bad thing, but it's not. Because you're choosing a side with your opinions, the people who agree with you start liking you even more and you build a stronger connection with them. It builds more trust with you and your audience. Also, the people who maybe don't agree with you are likely to stick around and watch your video anyways because they want to see what your points are for having that opinion. They want to see what the other side is like.
But when it comes to having controversial opinions, you need to actually believe in the opinion that you have and it has to be your actual genuine opinion. This is really important because you need to stick with your opinion. You can't just come up with a controversial opinion just because you think it'll get the views. And then like two weeks later, you go back on that opinion because people will catch on and it will destroy trust with your audience.
For example, I make content around filmmaking and videography and I have a very strong opinion when it comes to the editing software that I use in my videos. I think it is way better than all the other options that are out there. I've made videos about this opinion a bunch and I've gotten a ton of comments from people who disagree. But I also get a ton of comments from people who also agree with me. Having the opinion creates a ton of engagement and these videos always get a pretty decent number of views.
Now, something to keep in mind is that when I say to be controversial, I don't want you to start making videos about your opinions on things that are normally quite controversial like religion, human rights, or things like that. I'm just saying that you can be controversial with your opinion on small things, which at the end of the day don't really matter because they're just personal preferences.
In the example that I just talked about, I talk about my opinions on the editing program that I like to use for my videos and I think it's better than all the other ones for a couple of different reasons. This is a pretty lighthearted subject and at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter which editing program you use for your videos. Like controversy, this might also sound like something that you should avoid, but that's not exactly true. With your video, if you want people to comment, you have to give them a reason to comment. And a perfect way to do this is to intentionally get something wrong in your video. This is because people love pointing out when things are wrong. And when I say getting something wrong, I don't mean that you want to blatantly be incorrect because that can make itlook like you have no idea what you're talking about. What I mean is that you get something wrong that has no real effect on the validity of the information in your video. It's just some small little thing. That has no real effect on the validity of the information in your video. It's just some small little thing, like how you pronounce something or having an innocent little spelling mistake. Doing this will not make your video less valuable, it will just give people something to comment on.
For example, in this video, this guy is making a video about this cool pool table that can be quickly converted into a ping pong table. But in the video, he calls the ping pong table a pong ping table. Transform in minutes to a pong ping table too. There's technically nothing wrong with this, everyone still knows exactly what he's talking about, but the comments are full of people calling him out on it and it just triggers a ton of engagement.
Also, I want to bet you that this guy did this on purpose. He knew that by calling it a pong ping table, people would be commenting to call him out. It's all premeditated.
When it comes to getting engagement, you can literally just ask for it. It's that simple. You may have noticed people in their video say something like, "make sure you like and comment this video," or even ask you a question in their video and ask you to comment your answer. Doing small, simple things like this get you more engagement on your video because it reminds people to comment and like as well as answer the question that you asked them. And again, it gives them a reason to comment. Asking for engagement may seem insignificant, but it actually helps quite a bit. This is the entire reason why everyone does it.
Okay, so that's all the tips that I've got for you when it comes to creating engagement. There are definitely way more ways to create engagement, but these are just some of the easiest and most common methods that you'll see.
Something to keep in mind here is that you should be using these tricks sparingly and don't go overboard with these. You don't want it to get annoying for your audience by using these tactics too much. Also, I recommend that you only do the ones that you're actually comfortable with doing. Don't feel like you need to go out there and start spelling things wrong in your videos on purpose if that's not what you are comfortable with. Just stick to what you are comfortable with.
Okay, so that's everything that I've got for you for this video and I'll see you guys in the next one.